Pat Hanrahan, Marc Levoy, Mendel Rosenblum

Syllabus

Place

Virtual Places

Purpose

This new course will explore the use of visualization to design and understand
computers and computer systems. The premise is that computer systems are
becoming more and more complex and that the tools used to design and monitor
them need to be able to deal with the emerging complexity. Visualization is
widely used in other scientific and engineering disciplines to help people
understand the systems they study, but is relatively underutilized
in computer science itself. The key intellectual challenge is to develop the
right "visual metaphors" for conveying information about the system
in the most effective way, and to implement systems for extracting
and presenting the information to the user.

Structure

As in previous versions of CS 348C, this is a reading and project course.
Readings and lectures will cover basic visualization principles and tools,
and relevant work in the new field of information visualization,
We will then discuss the application of these ideas to computer systems.

All students are expected to participate in discussion, write a short
survey paper (roughly 10 pages),
and do a project to visualize a computer system.
Our goal in offering this course is to completely rethink how visualization
is used to understand computer systems.
The ideal student is one who is interested in exploring
a new research area and has the motivation and initiative
to identify the issues and important research directions.
This person should also be interested in interdisciplinary research
and interested in interacting with others with diverse backgrounds:
visual design, graphics, interaction,
networks, operating systems or computer architecture.
The course is targeted to both graphics and systems students. Systems
students who are actively involved in research that may benefit from
visualization are particularly encouraged to attend.

This version of CS348C - unlike past offerings -
cannot be taken for one unit since full participation by
everybody is required if the course is to be successful.
For this reason auditing is also not allowed.